Chapter 15 #3
‘Hiya!’ she beamed, her steamed-pudding breasts swelling visibly under a tight Lycra vest inscribed with the golden word ‘Angel’, ‘what can I get you?’
‘Watch this,’ whispered Lol, nudging Ana in the ribs, ‘Flint’s about to switch it on. Pass me a bucket …’
‘I’ll have a pint of Export please and my two friends here will have …’ He turned to Lol and Ana and raised his eyebrows at them, Roger Moore-style.
‘Same please,’ said Ana.
‘Vodka and cranberry, please,’ said Lol, adopting a strange, Joanna Lumleyesque accent.
‘Oh. Sorry. We haven’t got cranberry’ – the girl’s face blanched with the disappointment of not having cranberry and then brightened slightly – ‘we’ve got blackcurrant, though.’
‘What – blackcurrant juice?’
‘Yes. No. I’m not sure. I’ll just ask.’
Flint gave Lol a stern glance. ‘Oi – Scary Spice – leave the poor girl alone.’
‘Sorry Mister Flint sir,’ said Lol, stifling a giggle and nudging Ana in the ribs again.
‘Angel – is that your name?’ Flint pointed at the slogan on her her vest-top.
Lol raised her eyebrows at Ana.
The barmaid giggled and started pouring a pint. ‘Nah,’ she beamed, ‘my name’s Louise. But my friends call me Lou.’
‘So – Lou – are you a local?’
‘’Fraid so,’ she sighed, ‘I’ve lived here all my life.’
‘Bit dull is it?’
‘You could say that, yeah.’ She placed a full pint on the bar and started pouring another one. ‘It’s like Night of the Living Dead round here sometimes.’
‘And what do you do? Around here? Anything going on?’
‘Nah. Nothing. The only action is up on the seafront, but even that’s pretty non-existent.’
‘So if anything unusual was to happen in the area, you’d notice?’
‘Oh yeah. Definitely.’
Flint beamed at the barmaid again and Ana saw her cheeks flame scarlet.
‘You could be just the girl I’m looking for then.’
‘Oh yeah?’ She laughed and her blush increased.
‘Yeah. We’re looking for some information. About the cottage down on Broad Lane.’
‘Hark at Inspector Morse,’ whispered Lol into Ana’s ear, stifling another giggle.
‘Which cottage is that, then?’
‘The pink one. The pink one with the motorbike outside.’
‘Oh yeah. Yeah – I know the one. That’s ￡5.85 for the drinks, please.’
Flint passed her a tenner. Ana noticed that he deliberately brushed the side of her hand with his fingertips as he handed it over and she noticed that Lou almost visibly jumped, like she’d just had an electric shock.
‘D’you know anything about it? The cottage.’
She shrugged and slammed the cash register shut. ‘Like what?’
‘Like who lived there?’
Lou rested her elbows on the top of the bar and put her face in her hands, looking up at Flint with wide eyes, her sun-burned breasts quivering urgently. She grinned up at him. ‘Are you coppers?’ she asked.
‘Nah,’ grinned Flint, taking a big macho slurp of his lager and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes glued to Louise the whole time.
‘Look. Lou.’ He leaned down towards her so that their noses were almost touching.
Ana noticed that Louise stopped breathing. ‘Are you any good at keeping secrets?’
She nodded, her eyes widening by the second.
‘Look. Our friend. Well – she died last month.’
‘Oh God – I’m really sorry.’ Lou clutched her heart with her hand.
‘Yeah. Thanks. And the thing is that since she died, we found out some really weird things about her.’
‘Oh yeah?’ If Lou’s eyes had opened any wider, her eyelids would have slipped irretrievably behind her eyeballs.
‘And one of them was that she owned that cottage. The pink one.’
‘Oh right. You mean the woman with the black hair and the motorbike?’
‘Yeah. That’s the one. Did you know her?’
‘No. She wasn’t around all that often. Only at the weekends, I think. Mrs Wills – that was her name.’
‘That’s my mum’s name,’ Ana whispered in Lol’s ear.
‘And who did she used to stay with?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean – when she was there, in the cottage. Do you know who stayed with her?’
Lou shrugged. ‘I never saw anyone. There was an ambulance there sometimes, though.’
‘An ambulance?’
‘Yeah. You know. One of those like they take old people about in. Not like an emergency ambulance or anything.’
‘Like they might take disabled people about in, you mean?’
‘Yeah. That’s right.’
‘But you never saw anyone getting in or out of it?’
‘No – I mean, I saw it arriving and that, and the ambulance people helping someone out, but it was all on the wrong side, facing away from me, so I never saw anyone getting in or out. I just kind of thought it was an elderly relative or something.’
Flint nodded and looked very serious. ‘And did you ever speak to Mrs Wills? Did she ever come in here?’
‘Nah. Not in here. But I used to see her sometimes, on her motorbike – just passing through. Or at the Spar, a couple of times. Not to talk to or anything, though. She was very pretty. How did she – if you don’t mind me asking – how did she die, exactly?’
‘Well – we don’t know – exactly. That’s what we’re trying to find out.’
‘She didn’t – well, she didn’t die in the cottage, did she?’
‘No – she died in London. In her flat.’
‘God. I’m really sorry. She was so young and so pretty and everything. You must be gutted.’
‘Yeah. We are.’ Flint turned to look at Ana and Lol, and Louise looked at all three sadly.
‘Look,’ she began, ‘I get off in half an hour. If you want I can take you round to see some people. People who might know more than me. You know – busybodies and that.’ She giggled and Flint smiled, and she giggled even more.
‘Really?’ he gushed. ‘Would you? That would be fantastic, wouldn’t it, girls?’ He spun round and they nodded eagerly. ‘OK. Great. We’ll be here, in the corner, when you’re ready.’
‘OK,’ she beamed, ‘brilliant.’
He was about to turn away and then he stopped, turned back, looked straight at the slogan on Louise’s t-shirt and grinned. ‘Have you ever thought about changing your name?’
Louise flushed and giggled and hid her face, and Lol stuck her fingers down her throat and gagged and headed towards the back of the bar. ‘Christ, Lennard, you really are vile, d’you know that?’ she said, as they sat down.
‘Just doing what was necessary. That’s all.’
‘Oh. Bollocks. Couldn’t you have just said, “Hi – d’you know anything about the woman who used to live in the pink cottage on Broad Lane?
” Did you have to get yer knob out and start waving it around in front of the poor girl.
And you’re thirty-six years old in case you’d forgotten.
You could have fathered her and another half a dozen like her by now, you sick fuck. ’
Ana looked at them both in amazement. ‘Don’t you two ever stop arguing?’ she asked.
Flint and Lol looked at each other and laughed. ‘No,’ they both said in unison. ‘Not while we still get this much pleasure out of it, at any rate,’ said Lol, and they both laughed again.
And then Ana looked at them, at big, flash Flint with his scarred cheek and mad Lol with her platinum glued-in hair and her big raspy laugh and she thought, these are Bee’s people – I’m sitting here in a pub in Kent with Bee’s people.
And Bee’s dead. How weird is that? And just think, she thought, if I’d stayed in touch with Bee, if I hadn’t let my mother’s neuroses influence me, if I hadn’t believed her lies, if I hadn’t been so lazy, if I’d had more strength of character, maybe I could have been sitting in a pub with Bee’s people and Bee.
I could have known Flint since I was a teenager.
I could have known Lol when she was my age.
I could have been someone for Bee to talk to, someone for her to tell her secrets to.
I could have ridden pillion on her bike down to Kent and we could have done whatever it was she was doing here together.
I could have been at her flat in Baker Street on that night, on 28 July, and I could have saved her. I could have saved her …